“Can’t See The Fae-rest”

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One drawback to Lost Girl clumsily transitioning Bo’s affections from Dyson to Lauren this season is that it diminishes the tension when Ciara gets worked up about Dyson’s past relationship history. She can get jealous, but it’s an irrational streak that doesn’t seem to fit with her otherwise well-put-together personality. After the body-switching incident a few weeks ago, Ciara trusts Bo and wants to be her friend—though her way of showing it is through offering to buy meals and clothes with the wealth she inherited over the centuries.

At this point in the season, Bo and Dyson have a solid professional understanding when working on a case. Sure, they’re still learning to be friends, but their feelings aren’t getting in the way of Dyson’s relationship with Ciara. When she confronts him about his feelings at the end of the episode—after receiving some friendly guidance from Bo—she tells Dyson she loves him. Though Dyson says some pretty little things about his devotion, he never does say the words back. The Norn took his love for Bo, and now it seems he’s trying to fill the hole with someone who can’t quite measure up despite their historic chemistry that transcends centuries.

Lost Girl may focus a bit too heavily on romantic entanglements between the relatively limited regular cast, but since its lead character physically feeds off of that energy, it makes sense that wherever she puts down roots, drama will follow. It’s standard, generic melodrama, but heightened with supernatural elements that turn what would otherwise be tired repetition into light, enjoyable fare when combined with Kenzi’s humor. What throws me off is when the romance flies in as though the writers forgot about it for half an episode—as with the Lauren/Bo scene from last week.

This week’s case starts out in a halfhearted Gossip Girl direction before bending into some sort of play on the Bo/Dyson/Ciara triangle. But there’s no tension left in that arc now that Bo has turned her affections to Lauren (another unavailable yet interested suitor), and Dyson is magically barred from loving Bo. No matter how many scenes there are of awkward discomfort when Bo and Dyson have to work together when Ciara is around, they still make a successful team. This time around, they’re investigating a string of murders in an exclusive social group. Dyson and Hale to call in Bo and Kenzi to go undercover as socialites, which Kenzi embraces for the swag, but Bo approaches with typical apprehension.

Kenzi and Bo get to attend a fancy party in formalwear (except for Kenzi’s pink wig) and chat up some rich young men. But one by one the guys throwing the lavish yuppie parties are dying, asphyxiated with their bodies crushed. Eventually, Bo and Dyson hit upon the Fae exotic-good trade, run by slick designers like Lita, a snake Fae, or Hines, a more rustic black-market trader looking to sell off a lot of endangered wood items. The investigation points to Lita briefly, but since she spits instead of constricts as a defense mechanism, she’s dropped as a suspect.

Cases like this that seem to take a backseat to emotional conflicts depend on interesting side character, and Maganda is a mildly intriguing one. She’s a Batibat, a Tree Fae linked to one particular tree as a home. If the tree is cut down and split, Batibats wander in search of the wood in an obsessive desperation—and Hines is hiding where he got all the endangered wood. The idea of a home being split and sought after briefly comes up, and that’s one of the points Bo latches onto in order to vehemently defend Maganda’s state, but it’s tied in too late in the plot to really have any weight. This is a case about Bo learning to appreciate Ciara enough to offer advice on a relationship with Dyson, and for Ciara to confirm her feelings. Dyson avoids putting his feelings on the same level, and what’s most important going forward is that he can’t reciprocate her love despite having strong feelings for Ciara.

In the serialized corner for the week, we have the slowly unfolding Lauren/Nadia/Ash debacle. Lachlan is a poor overarching villain because he’s so glumly one-note, only switching between mildly irritating punk and complete asshole. He says he wants the best for any Light Fae, but he’s never had to put up any proof behind those empty words, and his actions tip the scales heavily in favor of his own self-interest. Lauren’s predicament only gets more dire this week, as she’s chastised by The Ash for an incomplete autopsy report, then denied the information she needs to investigate the Cursing Nail relating to Nadia’s coma, and to top it all off The Ash throws her in the dungeons for refusing to submit to his wishes any longer. Lauren has gone a long time without some good news, and even when she does experience happiness with Bo, it comes with guilt over Nadia.

It seems clear that we’re heading for a “Bo saves Lauren” episode, but seeing as how this is only halfway through the season, it’s unlikely that a big Bo/Lachlan showdown is looming right away. Bo didn’t get a chance to sulk about either of her romantic complications, with Dyson or Lauren, which lifted this episode above some of the more uneven hours that stumbled over Bo’s wallowing. We’re slowly getting somewhere, but I’m still waiting for the point where I care about Dyson and Ciara’s relationship before it blows up in their faces, or the point where Lachlan becomes something more than just the power-hoarding jackass. Until then, Lost Girl has a low ceiling.

Stray observations:

Oof, that is one doozy of an episode title.

I did like that the case ended without anyone having to kill an evil Fae. The Batibat’s reaction merits punishment in The Ash’s dungeons, but only until Hines retrieves all the wood from her tree to restore her mood.

In Kenzi’s interrogation with a random police officer, her rap sheet is a pretty hefty file, complete with a wide array of aliases—including Tony Soprano.

A clunker from Dyson, after his encounter with Lita: “You spit on the wrong guy.”

Most episodes of this show pass the Bechdel Test, but that doesn’t make an opening scene where Bo and Kenzi fawn over an expensive jacket much better.